When the Snow Falls (parts one and two) by Marie

[Marie]

***chapter two***

***promises, promises***

Ron Stryker, fast asleep behind the barn, was jolted rudely awake by a sudden commotion. 

Having lately been far too busy with his love life to follow footie, he’d been catching up on the world of sport with a three-day old edition of the Yorkshire Football Post (which its rightful owner, namely one Slugger Jones, having finally located his unchecked pools coupon, was still trying to locate).  Like the responsible person he’d allegedly become, Ron meant to spend just five minutes refinedly browsing through its pages, but the sun had been pleasantly warm and he’d soon nodded off.  As usual.  And not a single one of his promised chores had been completed.  As usual.  And everyone’s cynical observation that there was no way he’d turned over a new leaf proved correct.  As usual.  But the morning hadn’t started out like that. 

The morning had started out with glorious golden sunshine, and with Ron studying his  reflection in the mirror as he tied his stylish new olive green cravat, a gift from the lovely Helen to “match his fab red hair”, jauntily around his throat.  While making yet another resolution.  From this moment on, he told himself, he was going to be a respectable citizen.  Surely, with his shoulders thrown back and his manly lantern jaw, already he looked the part?  And even though he had overslept, probably due to the partaking of a few too many beers last night, instead of taking the whole day off, he’d ring his employer, Colonel Maddocks, to inform him he would only be a couple of hours late. 

Mr Stryker senior, being required at an early morning meeting, had long since left for his high-powered job in the city or he might well have roused Ron much sooner than Ron roused himself.  He’d begged his friend the colonel to return the favour of his business advice by giving his wayward son a job to keep him out of trouble, and, as a result, was permanently torn between gratitude that his sole heir was being kept on a straight and narrow path and embarrassment when Ron yet again teetered on the edge and hit the grass verge.  There was no Mrs Stryker.  Or, at least, there had been once, a long time ago, but more of that later in our story.

Feeling almost saintly at his decision to go into work, Ronald Gilroy Stryker, who should have been at Follyfoot over an hour ago,  carried a mug of tea and two door-stop sized bacon sandwiches smeared with brown sauce into the garden and, his legs sprawled out before him, dined al fresco, enjoying the smallest of breezes riffling through his fashionable shoulder-length hair, being entertained by the occasional gossamer cloud sailing slowly through an azure sky and a variety of birds dunking their feathers in the large ornamental fountain at the bottom of the extensive garden.
 
At last he finished his leisurely breakfast, yawned, stretched, and strolled back indoors to dial Follyfoot Farm.  Convinced the colonel would be over the moon to hear that one of his best-ever stable hands (as Ron fondly imagined himself to be) would be putting in an appearance, he was brought back down to earth with a nasty bump.  The bulk of the jobs had already been done, his irate employer yelled angrily down the receiver, and if he didn’t get his lazy ass down here immediately he’d pull strings with top brass and enrol him for National Service.  (Even though he knew National Service had been abolished over a decade ago, Ron shuddered involuntarily.  The colonel had way too many ex-Army contacts for his liking.)  Furthermore, Geoffrey Maddocks added, in a full blaze of fury, he could make up for his idleness by doing Dora, Steve and Slugger’s work while they took a well-earned break.  Ron clicked the phone back in its cradle, rubbed his sore ear and sighed.  Couldn’t he actually see it was very good of him to turn up when he could have simply feigned illness?   (Not that anyone ever believed his illness stories, but still…)

He sighed again.  He had no choice but to go in to Follyfoot today.  He was strapped for cash and Dad, who used to dole out the readies at the drop of a hat, absolutely refused to give him money for nothing anymore.  And the lovely Helen, with whom he was smitten, had very firm views on “spongers”.  In fact, Helen Shepherd was the reason behind his brand new persona.  This time.  For if the fiery-haired youth had been given a pound for every promise he made fully intending to keep, he’d have been a very rich man.  Instead his promises crumbled so quickly that, had they been pie crusts and he a pie-maker, he would have lived out his days in poverty. 

Ron was full of good intentions, but as his elderly neighbour often told him, when she complained, yet again, about his noisy motorbike waking her late at night and, yet again, Ron promised faithfully if it was after eleven o’clock he’d  get off the bike at the bottom of the street and push it quietly home, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The fire, screams and stomping hooves that he woke to, the day the floods began, made him wonder if he’d arrived there much sooner than they had been expecting him…

[Marie]

Not feeling too good so off work sick and been pottering on the internet  and editing this chapter. 

***Chapter Three***

***A Mad Fool***

“Deuce take it!  Why must Ron Stryker torment me so?”

Geoffrey Maddocks muttered the rhetorical question wearily as he rose reluctantly from his bed, hand pressed to his tender brow.  He had foolishly eaten cheese this morning.  Of course, he knew he would suffer for it.  Cheese always gave him migraine, but, dammit, he loved the stuff and, Yorkshire’s fresh dairy produce being second to none, sometimes it was just too hard for a body to resist.  But it had triggered a thumping headache, hence his short fuse with Ron.  After tearing a strip off the latecomer, when he finally deigned to appear, and having left particular instructions with his more willing workforce, Geoffrey withdrew to the peace and quiet of his bedroom in the manor house, where he closed the velvet puddle curtains to plunge the room into darkness and sink thankfully into the motherly arms of slumber. 

The headache and nausea receded as sleep and strong painkillers kicked in and he’d begun to feel guilty for yelling at young Stryker.  It wasn’t Ron’s fault, after all, that his head had been pounding and, despite all his wheeling, dealing and work dodging, the boy’s heart was in the right place.  He might like to pretend he wasn’t, but he was genuinely fond of the “clapped out old nags” (as Ron preferred to call the horses simply because he knew Dora hated the expression).  There was the time, for instance, when everyone had been furious because Stryker abandoned the mucking out to apparently enjoy a champagne day at the races.  The real reason he’d gone, to successfully persuade a cantankerous business associate of his father’s to allow an elderly racehorse he owned to retire to Follyfoot, was only revealed when, dressed surreally in top hat and tails, and his hair tied back in a pony tail for the first-ever and only-ever time, he led Vanity Fair out of a horsebox. 

Dora had laughed, cried and, aware Ron made the ultimate sacrifice in dressing like a straight-laced toff, which would have destroyed his street cred image forever if any of his biker mates had seen him, told her friend, to his great embarrassment (although she made amends with a hug and kiss on the cheek that had Steve burning with jealousy) his rough, tough, occasionally gruff, exterior hid a marshmallow centre.  Nobody could claim Ron Stryker didn’t have an agreeably easygoing nature either, although that particular trait had more to do with the fact he was too lazy to bother being angry rather than altruism towards his fellow man.

The announcement that he could take on everybody else’s chores for the rest of the day had had no more effect on the long-haired beatnik (Colonel Maddocks deluded himself with the belief he was quite up to date with the fashion and culture of young people, but, in truth, had yet to catch up with even Beatlemania, let alone the music and styles of the early 1970s) than for him to shrug his shoulders and admit, “Ah, well, fair play, I s’pose, me old mateys”.  Which, this being Ron, made them all immediately suspicious and slightly alarmed.  And quite why, as he left the farmhouse, smoothing back his flowing locks with the injured air of a martyr and, when he thought no one was looking, a grin as big as a Cheshire cat’s, he stashed a folded newspaper inside the infernal denim jacket he always wore, even on the hottest of days, Geoffrey well might well have queried, if his head hadn’t felt like a sledgehammer beat against it.

But as his migraine and mood lifted, the colonel couldn’t help feeling perhaps he’d perhaps been a little too harsh.  An hour must have passed by now, the period they’d agreed they would leave Ron to his own devices.  No more and no less, Geoffrey warned Steve, Dora and Slugger, shortly before the tardy one arrived, and boding no argument from his niece, who, not wanting to be away from her beloved horses for even five minutes, was already pacing the farmhouse, fretting about her charges.  An hour, Colonel Maddocks thought, and not the whole day as Stryker was led to believe, would be enough time to shock him into doing some work yet not enough time for him to cause any damage.  But he would make it up to Ron now.  He would send him to the village for fish, chips and mushy peas (a treat to them all instead of enduring Slugger’s somewhat dubious cooking, but particularly Ron, who’s favourite it was).  Pleased with his plan, Geoffrey decided to lie for just a few seconds more, being blissfully soothed by nature.  It was wonderfully relaxing.  Birds whistled and flapped wings in flight, horses whinnied and neighed, the brook that bordered Robinson’s Farm lapped rhythmically while a tractor ploughed somewhere in the distance…a gentle breeze sailed blithely indoors, bringing with it the smell of new-mown hay, the heady perfume of summer flowers, the familiar horsey scent that he had loved ever since boyhood…sunlight somehow climbed inside through the tiniest chink and his gaze contentedly followed its dancing, uncertain patterns, an all-is-well-with-the-world calm sweeping over him…

…Then the roar of a motorbike thundered aggressively into the solitude, the smell of petrol and smoke drowned out all sweeter aromas, and he remembered exactly why Ron Stryker always pushed him too far.

Almost wishing he didn’t have to look, the venerable old soldier pulled back the drapes and, still somewhat drowsy from the effects of the tablets, was convinced he was be dreaming.  Either the mad fool really had lost his mind this time, or he planned a new career as a stuntman or circus clown, for Stryker leapt off the moving bike, grabbed a bucket of water (one always stood in readiness by the Lightning Tree) and threw it over someone standing near the barn.  But if he had lost his mind, then it would appear Dora, Steve and Slugger had suddenly been stricken down with the same malady.  Colonel Maddocks knew all three, especially Dora, would be keen to get back to the horses at the end of the hour, but he hadn’t expected to see the girl running at breakneck speed towards the stables, with Steve and Slugger hot on her heels.  But, bafflingly, they too picked up buckets of water, stolen from under the startled horses’ noses, and flung yet more over the already soaked gentleman.

And then he noticed the thick, black smoke curling into the sky…

[Marie]

I have the afternoon off, friend staying over tonight (Chinese takeaway and wine  )    so I should be catching up with housework while I have the spare time but, sod it, this is more fun... 

***Chapter Four***

***Villains and Heroes***

Being first on the scene to help put out the fire and first to bring back one of the two frightened ponies (Tilly thoughtfully made the task remarkably easy by stopping nearby, at Robinson’s Brook, to idly graze and seemingly take in the breathtaking views of Yorkshire) Ron was hailed a hero and loved every moment of it.  He had needed expend no more energy other than ambling up to the sweet-natured little horse, who, in turn, trotted happily up to greet him, but the three Cragge children, faces pressed to the quaint round farmhouse windows, anxiously awaiting the homecoming of the ponies that they’d last seen seeing tearing away in terror, ran out to the grinning stable-hand and made as much fuss of Ron Stryker as they did of Tilly. 

Mr and Mrs Cragge, embarrassed that their uintentional trespassing had caused the chaos, and relieved that the pony was safe, clapped him on the back and praised him to the skies.  And Ron, thoroughly enjoying himself, did nothing whatsoever to play down his heroic status nor remind anyone that if he hadn’t been fast asleep, or had fixed the lock to the paddock, or had arrived for work on time, the chaos might never have happened.  But happen it did and, as always, when trouble befell Follyfoot Farm, and Follyfoot being in the business of caring for cruelly-treated horses in an often cruel world, trouble being no rare event, the Follyfooters slotted into their roles.

Steve and Dora raced Copper and Billy through farms and fields, down country lanes and crooked paths, leaping over hedges and ditches, kicking back soil and stones, galloping as though chased by the very hounds of hell, to reach highly-strung Tammy in time, before her frantic running led her on to the motorway.  They had since breathlessly telephoned, from the red telephone kiosk on the corner of Out Lane and Grange Road, to impart the glad tidings that she was none the worse for her ordeal, and they were making their way back to Follyfoot at a more leisurely pace. 

Colonel Geoffrey Maddocks thanked whatever gods there might be as things fell into place albeit in a haphazard kind of way.  For yet another person increased their tally of visitors.  Tuesday being one of Bertha Smith’s two cleaning days, Bertha had arrived in the midst of all the confusion and added to it.

Mrs Smith offered to run a bath for the soaking wet Marty, as, in trying to stamp out the fire, Mr Cragge accidentally set his clothes alight, the blaze fortunately quickly extinguished by buckets of water being thrown over him (which explained the phenomenon a baffled Geoffrey had witnessed).  But perhaps she changed her mind at the last minute and decided his wife deserved a bath instead, for she poured Dora’s exquisitely-perfumed and hugely expensive bath oils, a gift from her parents, into the water.  Asked by Colonel Maddocks if she would kindly gather some dry garments to leave outside the bathroom, Bertha must have imagined Marty to be a peculiar one-size-fits-all shape and to have equally peculiar taste in clothes.  Marty  later emerged, smelling gloriously of various fruits and flowers, and it was all that Debbie Cragge could do to stop herself from rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter. 

Teemed with a smart green tunic, which once formed a part of Colonel Maddocks’ dashing uniform, but now hung unflatteringly over the borrower’s scrawny chest, her husband wore a pair of Slugger’s old trousers that barely reached his ankles and were only kept up on his skinny waist by a black tie (used by Slugger for funerals, the deaths of ex-Army buddies becoming all too common as time flew by) being fastened round it.  Gaudily-patterned socks, long abandoned by Ron as being too garish even for him, and a pair of Steve’s old, scuffed boots, with string in place of laces, almost completed his outfit.  The boots were slightly too large and Marty hobbled towards his wife, inwardly swearing he would never, ever, ever again wander anywhere without stopping to read the signposts.  Blushingly furiously at his new look, he removed the pièce de résistance to his fashion statement, Dora’s wide-brimmed wedding guest hat.  Bertha had insisted he wore it to keep the sun off his head and, like most folk, Marty, as he told Debbie, found Bertha too nice to refuse.

Bertha Smith, a petite lady of around eighty, with ghostly blue eyes, wild grey hair and face wrinkled as a withered winter’s apple, had cleaned at the manor house for decades.  Or, at least, Bertha came to clean, but nowadays nobody let her, partly because of her grand age, partly because she always forgot what she was doing and left a trail of abandoned dusters, half-polished floors, and mirrors, windows, even priceless artwork, smeared with cleaning fluid.  But I digress.  Bertha, one of the many lost and lonely souls that have found their way to Follyfoot over the years, woven into its tableau by the spell it weaves and drawn to that symbol of hope, the Lightning Tree, has her place too in our story and I shall tell more of her history later.

Mugs of tea were made for Bertha and Mr and Mrs Cragge, creamy milk, delivered fresh from Whistledown Dairy early that morning, was poured for the children, and a tin of biscuits produced for all.  (Slugger did suggest his home-baked shortbread would go down a treat, but the colonel whispered back there wasn’t enough in the pantry and he’d hate to disappoint Dora, Steve and Ron, and didn’t tell him the truth:  he thought the kiddies traumatized enough.)

Slugger Jones, without quite knowing how it happened, found he, and he alone, not together with Ron, as per Colonel Maddocks’ instructions, had several mundane but essential jobs to complete. 

“Can’t ‘elp bein’ popular, Slugs,” the denim-clad youth teased, when the ex-boxer pointed this out.  Ron, accompanied by little Amy, Julie and Paul Cragge, had paused to lean on the stable door and lazily watch Slugger at work (although two-year-old Paul, being too tiny to reach, had to stare through a hole in the wood).  “Bane of me life, it is.  Always ‘as been, always will be.  Cross I ‘ave to bear. But do you ‘ear me complain?  Nah, wouldn’t dream of it!”

He tutted and smirked, aware his friend was seething, but confident he wouldn’t dare start a heated argument or utter even one of his huge stock of colourful swear words while kids were present.  For, after their milk and biscuits, the youngest Cragges, all tears forgotten, had taken to following Ron everywhere.  They were enchanted by someone who gave them donkey rides, who shared the same sense of devilment and told wonderful stories (Ron’s account of how he found Tilly was a thousand times more dangerous and dramatic than the actual event).  Flattered by the hero-worship, he told them another tall tale, of how he flew off to the States, saved bucking broncos, lassoed bandits, won a championship baseball game, met the president, and flew back, all in the same day.  Uncertain whether to believe him or not, and preferring the latter option, the little ones’ eyes widened in awe. 

Ron got on extremely well with children because he had never learnt not to be one.  Two or three years older than both Steve and Dora, he sometimes behaved as though he were much younger, so much so, that it would be on the tip of the colonel’s tongue to tell him to go and play outside. 

But all good things must come to an end and Ron Stryker’s fledgling fan club folded its wings to be no more when Colonel Maddocks got out the LandRover to drive the Cragge family and Bertha back to Tockwith…

[Marie]

***Chapter Five***

***Troubled Waters***

So maybe then Ron was bored.  Maybe he was annoyed because he’d run out of excuses not to do any work or jealous of Steve and Dora chatting so cosily together or unhappy because his girlfriend Helen was visiting her grandparents in London and staying over for a few days.  Maybe every now and then he remembered he had a chequered past and didn’t quite want to let go of it.  There were times when we never really knew Steve and there were times when we never knew why Ron Stryker did what he did.  Whatever the reason, he would whittle away, a niggle here, a comment there, crumbling, kneading, mixing, until the recipe was done.

And just when the day had become so perfect. 

Even Ron finally got up off his backside to help out with the workload.  Mainly because Colonel Maddocks, who had business matters in Tockwith, thus wouldn’t be joining the late lunch club, gave Slugger strict instructions not to send him on any chip shop errand until he did.

Slugger chuckled, recollecting his friend’s expression when told he was doing everyone else’s chores for the rest of the day.  (“Sheesh, I knew you lot ‘ad far more sense than to leave me on me lonesome for long!” Ron winked, licking salt, vinegar and greasiness off his fingers.) 

That afternoon, glad to relax after the earlier dramas, they hadn’t bothered with the niceties of dining at the table.  Instead they sat, or in Ron’s case, sprawled, anywhere and everywhere, eating with the wooden forks supplied by Harry’s Plaice, crying with laughter when Steve lost his somewhere in the middle of the fish.  Dora had been offered Slugger’s best plate, a willow-patterned affair with only the tiniest piece chipped off, but graciously declined it as being “unnecessary” although once she ate in grand banqueting halls and exclusive restaurants patroned only by, and only allowed to be patroned by, the rich and famous. 

The Honourable Miss Maddocks came to Follyfoot knowing everything there was to know about etiquette.  She was shocked when Slugger cleaned his shoes on the same table where peeled potatoes soaked in a large pan of water, and she couldn’t help wrinkling her nose in disgust every time Ron drank straight from a bottle and nobody, not even Uncle Geoffrey, cared if elbows rested on tables and peas were eaten from knives.  Kind-hearted Slugger took pity and did his utmost to be more of a gentleman (considering his upbringing, no mean feat) while Ron went out of his way to be more of a slob and Steve muttered darkly about “living in the real world”.  Gradually, however, the culture clash resolved itself amicably. 

The “boys” lost their more loutish table manners, no longer slurping soup or stretching across dinners, while Dora lost her snobbishness, enjoying dunking biscuits in tea and nowadays not giving cake forks a second thought.  Having hoped that their daughter might one day, in ball gown and tiara, sweep elegantly down the mansion staircase at her debutante ball, Lord and Lady Maddocks would have despaired if they were to see her now, a smudge of grease on her cheek, strands of hay in her hair, a scrunched up newspaper, that contained remains of a takeaway meal, resting on the lap of her faded jeans.

But surely Dora never looked happier or more beautiful than she did at that moment, lips curved in a sweet, shy smile, hazel eyes dancing, the red glow of firelight shining on her face and catching glints the colour of autumn leaves in her hair.  Oh, raise your eyebrows as you may, but even in the very height of summer, and as temperatures soared, there was always a fire roaring in that old black lead range!
 
The seventeenth century building could often be cold and draughty and Slugger said a home wasn’t a home without a fire blazing in its hearth.  Ron Stryker said the farmhouse was cold because it was haunted and spent a good deal of time trying to spook his companions by hiding articles or creeping up from behind to tap them on the shoulder or pretending, with almost believable expressions of fear and horror, that he’d just seen a mysterious Something.  There was never any malice in it.  Ron was always fooling around.  But then there were other times.  Times when he would be surly and mean-spirited, determined to stir up trouble.  Pushing and pushing and pushing until something or someone gave.
 
That Tuesday, shortly before the heavens opened and angels wept, he succeeded.

Having planted the seeds for an argument, Ron sat back and watched them grow.  And, in time, the general chatter ended, and to his great satisfaction, with Steve storming out and Dora biting back her tears…

[Marie]

Author’s Note:  Never been sure if Slugger was meant to be from London or Yorkshire so thought I’d supply an explanation!   

***chapter six***

***Owt Abaht Nowt***

It was all over something and nothing, or “owt abaht nowt”, as Slugger, shaking his white head, muttered to the pots, rinsing them under the fast running cold water tap, his homely Yorkshirism curiously laced with Cockney twang.  For Slugger Jones lifted accents as easily as others might pluck ripe apples from autumn trees.  He had grown up in a travelling fair, and then, first as a private in the Army and later as Colonel Maddocks’ batman, lived in several countries, gathering drawls and fragments of language along the way.  Perhaps it had been his destiny to have nowhere but Follyfoot to call his home.  Only hours after his teenaged parents tentatively welcomed their newborn into a harsh, impoverished world, they had wrapped him in worn old clothes and stolen away in the dead of night, to avoid rent due on damp, mice-infested lodgings.

Ron Stryker, who had never known a day’s poverty or hunger in his twenty years on this earth, snatched up his guitar and followed Steve outdoors.  The moody, dark-haired young stable-hand had taken refuge, such little as it offered, under the torn, ravaged branches of the Lightning Tree, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his gaze somewhere far away. 

Ron, grinning broadly, sauntered by, strumming his guitar like a wandering minstrel.  Disappointed at Steve’s lack of reaction, he stopped to lean on the nearby fence, cleared his throat in an annoying manner several times, and began singing. 

The catchy little song was a fun one lately climbed the charts, and Ron stayed faithful to its lyrics until  he reached the chorus.  Then, instead of the cheerful “grooooovy, chirpy chirpy cheep cheep, chirpy chirpy cheep cheep” he substituted his own version, nodding his head and tapping his foot in time to the beat :-

“Oh, deee-arrr, dearie, dearie, me me; dearie, dearie, me me…”

On the third chorus, and just when it seemed he wouldn’t rise to the bait, Steve suddenly flew at him.  Ron managed to lift his beloved guitar to safety just in the nick of time and, even though he’d been the one to initiate the fight, was incandescent with rage that something he loved had so nearly come to harm.  The guitar was a part of him.  Music had always soothed his soul, even in the dark days, when he’d been too young to understand. 

Blazing with anger, he launched himself back at Steve and the two wrestled furiously, landing blow after blow.  The threatened rain had begun to fall now, splashing down on Follyfoot Farm, muddying the soil, drumming down on the stables, running in silver streams down guttering and pipes.  They were oblivious to it, oblivious to all around them but the hatred for each other.  Slugger finally dragged them to their feet and pulled them apart, the strength he’d acquired in his boxing days undiminished with age.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!”  Dora pressed her hands over her ears as though, if she shut out all noise, she could shut out everything bad in the world.   “Please, please stop it!”

At the sound of her voice, Steve seemed to suddenly waken from a dream, and slowly come to his senses.  Ron however was not to be so easily placated.

Shuffling and shadow boxing, he glared at Steve, desperately trying, and failing, to work himself loose from Slugger’s vice-like grip.

Nobody heard the rumble of the Land Rover or even noticed the colonel had returned until he spoke.  Quietly, calmly, as though a white hot anger, too dangerous to be unleashed, bubbled up inside.

“Ron.  Get cleaned up please and go home.  Just…go home.”

“’E started it!  ’E threw the first bleedin’ punch!”  The irony of his words passed Ron by, rich, red blood dripping heavily down from his nose and soaking into his shirt. 

“I don’t care who started it.  I’m finishing it.  You have a home to go to.  Get cleaned up and go home.”

“Yeh, always my ****in’ fault, innit?”  Finally freed from Slugger’s hold, Ron swung round, wanting to continue the brawl but finding himself unable to now that Steve had stopped and instead venting his frustration on his employer.  “Never Saint bloody Steve’s!  Well, I’ve ‘ad it with the lot of yer.  I don’t need nuffink more from losers!”

He slung the guitar on his back to march through the thickening mud to the gate and, without a backward glance, roared off on his motorbike.
 
“Ron’s bark is worse than his bite, Dora.”  His niece was shivering with emotion and Geoffrey Maddocks gently squeezed her shoulder.   “You know that.”  He turned back to the forlorn figure.  “Steve, it might be an idea if you were to come inside with us and get yourself cleaned up too.”

He didn’t seem to hear at first.  Heedless of the wild weather, he had tipped the bucket of water, swelled with rain, over the roots of the lightning tree and, using the upturned tin bucket as a chair and the tree as backrest, he rubbed his sore knuckles ruefully, looking vaguely down at the blood that stained his clothes.  It wasn’t his own.  It was obvious who had come off worst in the scuffle.  But this wasn’t what he wanted.  Violence had never been what he wanted and yet somehow…He wiped a hand over his face, flicked back his soaking wet hair, spoke through gritted teeth.

“I’m fine here, colonel.  I don’t need anyone.”

Geoffrey Maddocks exchanged a glance with his former batman, now chief cook and bottle washer at Follyfoot Farm.  Though their births and early lives could not have been more different, over the years Slugger Jones had become his right-hand man and perhaps his greatest friend.  We may be born to bask in untold riches or to barely eke out an existence, but Death is the ultimate leveller, knowing no distinction between rich and poor.  Together they had witnessed the terrible tragedies of war, the senseless destruction, the broken bodies and burning cities, the starving, hollow-eyed skeletal creatures of concentration camps…Sometimes such harrowing cruelty was more than a man could bear and even the most experience soldier would withdraw into himself for a while.  Whatever horrors Steve too had seen, the scars ran as deep. 

“As you wish.  Although I would advise you at least go inside.  There is little point in all of us remaining out here.  Dora, my dear…”

The early evening rain was lashing down ever harder, clouds dark as night obscured the sky, but, as though the sun blazed and they were about to take a leisurely stroll through a flower-filled garden, Geoffrey proffered his arm.

“Steve, please…”  Dora pleaded tearfully.  Why did it hurt so much when Steve hurt?  Why did it feel as though someone ripped out her heart?  “Uncle, Slugger…We can’t just leave him here like this, we can’t!”

/continued on next page

[Marie]

/chapter six/owt about nowt/continued from previous page

But they could.  They wrapped their arms around her slender waist, and they led her indoors, her silent tears falling fast as the raindrops that ran ceaselessly down the windows of the old, familiar farmhouse.   

Nothing could consoler her. Not the crackling and flickering flames dancing joyously in the hearth, nor the quiet presence of her uncle, busily working on some accounts under the yellow glow of the desk lamp, nor Slugger’s tender fussing.

Poor Slugger, like a doting father with a small child, he tried so hard to cheer her.  Being astute enough to realise that, while his cooking might just about have passed muster with his unit back in the War,  men aren’t too fussed about what they eat amid bombs and bullets as long as they eat, he nonetheless believed his baking skills to be second to none.  Nobody except Ron had ever been brave enough to tell him the truth, but, as Ron was always playing the clown, Slugger simply chuckled at the “joke” and baked apple pies and Victorian sponges galore while everyone else inwardly sighed at the vast array of goodies they were expected to consume with relish.

Knowing they were Dora’s favourite, he took out a batch of scones, and spread one with butter.  She had no appetite, the butter was too thick and the scone tough as a rock cake, but, so as not to hurt his feelings, she forced herself to eat it and drink the stewed tea he set down beside it.  She wiped her eyes and even tried to smile at his feeble jokes and at her uncle’s occasional reassuring words.

But Follyfoot, and her heart, had been torn asunder. 

The rain fell heavier, but still Steve didn’t move, only pulled up the collar of his old leather jacket.  As though that made any difference! 

Let the rain lash down.  Let ice cold raindrops trickle down his back.  What did it matter?  He’d been far, far colder…


Chirpy Chirpy, Cheep Cheep (Middle of the Road) copyright Lally Stott

[Marie]

Author's Note: Have a nice Jubilee Day tomorrow, whatever you are doing.  I will be going for a pub meal with three friends so thought I'd post this now because who knows how much drink I will have had tomorrow?!!   

***chapter seven***

***The Kiss***

(part one)

They nearly kissed one breathtakingly beautiful summer’s day, Steve and Dora. 

She had taken Jimbo for an exhilarating early morning ride along the old bridle path, with the sun already climbing an azure sky and the grass and trees, refreshed by the previous night’s rain, a deeper English green than ever before. 

The bridleway was one of Dora’s favourite places.  Accessed via an ancient bridge known locally as Mother Capstick’s Sorrow (for it was here, on this very bridge in 1682, that Agnes Capstick discovered her husband, gone to gather wood for the winter fire, frozen to death, the sad tale somewhat ghoulishly immortalised on a bronze plaque) it abounded with the flowers and fruits added to the herbal cures Mother Capstick was noted for.  Never reaching the world-wide fame of her predecessor Mother Shipton and never claiming, or trying to, tell foretell the future, she was nonetheless well known in her native Yorkshire in her time and a fascinating first-hand account of her patients, their ailments and remedies, collected by one Bartholomew Prytherch and the main reason Mother Capstick is still remembered today, can be found in the records department at Tockwith Library.

Across a silvery stream that flowed down into the River Ouse, the bridleway’s shade gave a welcome breath of cooling air to the early heat of the day.  Sparkles of sunlight filtered through leafy tree branches and no sound could be heard save for birdsong, the distant swish of the water, and steady clip-clop of hooves, invoking an atmosphere of a bygone age.  Riding slowly in the blissful solitude, Dora told Jimbo about Steve.  How, bit by bit of late, like a door being slowly pushed open, he’d begun to divulge fleeting glimpses of his childhood.  The stories chilled her.  Her own childhood may have been lonely and her parents indifferent, but they had never been deliberately cruel and Dora had at least known the love of the staff at Saxe Coburg Mansion.  Poor Steve seemed to have existed in a cold, dark limbo where nobody cared very much what happened to him.  She was shocked when he revealed, without an ounce of self-pity, that, apart from the standard one child, one toy rule in the Home, he couldn’t recollect ever receiving a single Xmas or birthday present.  Mummy and Daddy had always showered her with gifts and…

A sudden rustling made her start, for a wild moment imagining Ron must be hiding somewhere ready to laugh about “Loopy Lou” being “two, maybe bleedin’ three or four, sarnies short of a picnic”.  But it was only a kingfisher taking hurried flight in a blur of blue and orange and, anyway, as she remarked to Jimbo, smiling wryly, not only was Ron far too big to be  mistaken for a kingfisher, he would never in a million years be up and out so early! 

Everybody at Follyfoot, particularly Ron, teased her about it, but Dora talked to horses about anything and everything.  Ever since she was a small girl, and Jimmy would take her with him to Hepplethwaite’s Stables, she had felt an almost mystical quality that drew she and they like magnets to each other.  Jimmy said she had been blessed by God and when she got to Heaven He would tell her they had been lucky to have her for a friend, but Dora, who, like many people, preferred to take a rain check, hopefully for a great many years yet, on whether or not a Supreme Being and afterlife existed, thought she was lucky one.  Horses, in their kind, wise, quiet way, always listened.  And Jimbo inspired confidences.  He had an endearing personality, and, if she spoke directly to him, a comical way of studying her with his warm brown eyes and nodding his head solemnly.

The gentle giant was found hungry, thirsty and neglected by an estate agent sent to value a secluded property.  Usually a rescuer would notify the RSPCA, but Sydney Bullington had had business dealings with Ron Stryker’s father in the past and remembered him talking of a refuge for unwanted horses somewhere in nearby Yorkshire.  A brief telephone call to his friend established exactly where and Jimbo was soon settled in Follyfoot, Dora’s initial anger dissipating when she realised the horse had not been cruelly treated.

The mystery of why he’d been suddenly abandoned after being so well cared for was answered by Bullington.  A tragic road accident had claimed the lives of his owners and the beneficiary of their estate, a great-niece in Canada, who never knew her aunt and uncle, gave instructions for the house and its sprawling land to be evaluated for a quick sale.  Claire, an animal lover, was upset to hear about Jimbo, but relieved that Follyfoot Farm could take him.

“So you’ve always been loved and always will be,” Dora finished explaining to Jimbo, as they returned at the same leisurely pace across the bridge off the bridleway.  But they galloped the last leg of the journey back, heady with the freedom of the rushing breeze and the wide open countryside.  Her face was red and her hair tousled and she was totally unaware of how her eyes shone as she dismounted.  Though someone else noticed…

[Marie]

Off work today to wait in for plumber so finally had some time to work on this chapter! 

***chapter eight***

***The Kiss***

(part two)

Steve Ross set down the pitchfork he’d been using to load bales of hay, dusted his hands on his jeans, and strolled nonchalantly towards The Honourable Dora Maddocks, only daughter of Lord and Lady Maddocks of the famous and fabulously wealthy Maddocks family line.  He longed so much to run his fingers through that glorious hair whenever it was windswept.  She was so pretty.  So natural.  So…

......far away from all that he was.

Oblivious of her own beauty, which only made her more beautiful, she stood talking to the horse, who listened intently, then nodded gravely.

“Oh, Jimbo!  I’ll miss you sooo much!” 

Dora laughed and immediately afterwards sighed, slender fingers brushing small silver tears that trickled down her face, no sooner wiped away than they fell anew.  It had been their last outing together.  A family that had recently lost a beloved horse from old age wanted to adopt one of Follyfoot’s and had fallen in love with Jimbo.  Dora tried to put them off with wildly untrue stories of him being “too frightfully high-spirited to train” and “not at all suitable for children”.  Until Uncle Geoffrey figured out what was going on.  The Baileys, mother, father and two kids who adored horses, were to collect Jimbo later that morning.  He was going to a very good home, of that she had no doubt.  But it broke her heart to say goodbye to any of the horses.

“Hey, guys!  How ya doin’?” 

The words sounded silly even as they flew from Steve’s lips and he died inside yet a little more when he caught fleeting glimpse of Dora’s raised eyebrows and amused expression.  He had meant to be funny, but he had meant for her to laugh with him not at him.  And it didn’t take much to shatter his fragile confidence.  Not that anybody realised how fragile that confidence was.  The tough persona was all a wonderful act perfected from a very early age.  Beneath the armour hid a shaky, uncertain youth craving love and so terrified of rejection he pretended he didn’t need anyone.  The clever illusion had got him through life thus far and he’d imagined it was the way he would play it too when the colonel hired him as stablehand at Follyfoot.

Until Dora. 

Every now and then, while out riding, they would stop at the highest point across the river to gaze out over the rolling green hills of Yorkshire.  After a while, it became a regular pattern, their special place, their special time.  Here, they would rest the horses and chat, at first about inconsequential matters:  the songs in the charts, Slugger’s cooking, Ron’s latest scam, last night’s TV.   Sometimes, almost as if to make up for childhoods lost, they would play childish games, searching for four-leafed clovers or blowing the seeds off dandelions, making shapes from clouds or finding faces in trees.  Gradually, however, the conversations deepened and they confided in each other snippets of their past. 

Although he skimmed over the worst bits. 

Because how could he dim those hazel eyes with tears?  How could he break her heart with sadness even as his own heart ached with the knowledge they could never be?

He would never in a million years admit it to Ron, but he envied the way he was always so sure of himself with girls.  There was never any shortage of females keen to make Steve’s acquaintance, and outwardly he seemed cool, indifferent, but inwardly he felt awkward and shy around the opposite sex. 

Or maybe it was because there was only one girl he ever dreamed of.

Dora, to Steve’s great annoyance, did not escape the red-headed biker’s attentions.  He made her laugh and, even if she couldn’t see that Ron Stryker, clown extraordinaire, star jester, crown prince of comedy, would like much more than their matey brother/sister relationship, Steve’s eyes were wide open.  He wished he could make her laugh too.  But laughter never came easily to him.  Laughter was something only other people knew.  Maybe though laughter was something he could learn.

Ron had a habit of imitating characters from movies and TV shows, stealing accents or catchphrases or casual Americanisms.  The first time Steve tried it, he could have kicked himself.  What was he thinking?  It might sound fine at the village disco and maybe in years to come it might even be the norm, but right here in the middle of Follyfoot Farm in 1971, it was idiotic and out of place.  And, anyway, it wasn’t what he came to say.  What he came to say was far more difficult.  He patted Jimbo’s shoulder and paused for a while before he spoke again. 

A sure sign, Dora knew, that he’d been mulling things over.  Because she knew so much about this boy and yet…

......she knew so little.

At last he drew a deep breath. 

“Hurts me to say goodbye to them too.  Cuts me up like a knife twisting inside. But we can’t keep them here forever, Daz. Not the ones that have somewhere to go.  We need room for the others.  A horse, a person…listening out for those who need us, giving them a second chance, that’s what Follyfoot is all about.   Sometimes, if you truly love someone, you just have to let them go,” he added, looking up again.

Their eyes met unexpectedly.  Their breath merged on the summer air, their faces so close they almost touched.  Shuffling uncomfortably, lowering their gaze, wishing a thousand miles between each other, too shy, too young, too uncertain to kiss the lips they longed to.

And so one of them had to break that embarrassed silence, one of them had to snap that magic spell.

“Sometimes.  But not always, Steve,” Dora replied gently, touched that he’d remembered her childhood nickname.  “Your mother left you in the orphanage because she didn’t love you.”

His face darkened.  “Mam wasn’t all bad,” he said defensively.

“Steve, wait!  I didn’t mean…”

But it was already too late.  He’d become a stranger again, this boy who could steal her heart with his smile, this boy who captured her soul with his eyes. 

He turned away quickly before she saw the tears.  She would never understand, this girl who could steal his heart with her smile, this girl who captured his soul with her eyes.

She could never know how in a world filled with hate one moment of affection will shine brightly forever.

Mam kissed him once.

She might call him weak and useless, she might take his money to spend on herself, she might have mocked him, slapped him, punched him, kicked him.  But she was his mother and she must have loved him.  Because nobody could take away this undeniable fact…

Mam kissed him…
                             ...Once…

[Marie]

Really long chapter!  I think this pattern, longer chapters with more frequent breaks inbetween updates, might be a better option than short chapters with more frequent updates though…? 

***chapter nine***

***Nobody’s Child***

His earliest memories were of never knowing.  Daddy disappeared, as people did, and he and Mam lived in a twilight world of neither day nor night.  At least, he thought the tall man, whom he vaguely recalled carrying him on his shoulders down to the Farmer’s Field to feed the ponies, had been a Daddy.  Other kids seemed to have them instead of uncles, so they must have had one too once, and Mam must have put him down somewhere and lost him.  But he could never be certain because nothing was certain.

If Mam wanted him “out from under her feet”, Steve would simply be despatched to bed, no matter if it was nine o’clock in the morning or ten past three in the afternoon.  Or he could be wide awake in the early hours, sitting next to his drunkenly snoring mother on the itchy grey blanket that covered the sofa’s lumpy springs, staring at an eerily quiet television that shut down hours ago.  There might be bread and jam for tea or fish fingers and beans or three custard cream biscuits.  There might be a bowl of sliced banana with milk or a packet of crisps and bottle of pop or even pork chops, potatoes and peas.  There might be almost nothing to eat all day.  Or the world could be topsy-turvy, turning so rapidly round on its axis that there was no such thing as time, any one of these meals being breakfast or dinner or tea.  He and Mam just never knew.

Mam, for reasons unknown, painted bright blue over her eyes and brushed her eyelashes with a tiny brush, over and over and over, until they resembled spiders’ legs.  She patted her face with powder from a gold-plated case that she would take out of her handbag and flip open to reveal a small round mirror and, stretching and pursing her mouth this way and that, would stroke her lips with a bright red lipstick that smeared cups and glasses and cartons and bottles.   And the cigarettes in the ash-tray on the mantelpiece. 

That battered red tin ash-tray with its collection of fag ends fascinated him. 

One day, curious about its toy potential, the little boy stood on tip-toe in the hearth (fortunately, the fire was rarely lit and, as usual, there was nothing in the grate but a pile of cold, grey ash) and hauled himself up by his fingertips.  Concentrating deeply, he reached for the cigarette stubs, but his already tenuous grip had been weakened even further and he fell suddenly forward, his hand sweeping wildly across the contents of the mantelshelf.  An alarm clock, half a dozen hair rollers, rent book, two large pennies, a threepenny bit, cigarettes, lighter and ash-tray, all tumbled down with him, the latter tapping his shoulder as though in remonstration as it passed by and, traitor that it was, clattering and rattling and spinning its tinny music against the tiles.

Steve’s left temple, cheek and elbow took the brunt of it, but he barely noticed the pain, sucking in a breath as he heard a door being flung open, and so fiercely that it banged several times against the wall.

Kathy Ross stormed downstairs, her screeching voice grating on even her own ears.  But who could blame her for losing it?  She’d been trying to sleep off a hangover and she could do without the brat playing up again.  Her head was pounding fit to burst, her mouth was like sawdust and she’d thrown up in the outside lav three times before managing to crawl wearily into bed.  And how long had that peace lasted before the brat kicked off?  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, why couldn’t the authorities just take him?  Twice she’d been down to the welfare office in Queen’s Drive, twice, two buses there and two buses back each time, spent a bloody fortune on bus-fares, only for the snooty bitches to tell her she couldn’t just give up her child because he was in the way.  What was she supposed to do then, beat him to a pulp in front of them all and wind up in jail?  And anyway she was a good enough mother.  A slap here and there did nobody no harm and she fed and clothed the little freak. 

Ste had been pleased as punch when she got preggers and at least there’d been someone else around back then to share the burden.  But Ste was dead now, killed in the pit accident, and the compo and sympathy collections long gone.  Not that there had been much sympathy to begin with and all because she liked a drink or two. 

There was a reason, a damn good reason, why she’d left that “lovely little terraced house” in “the pretty little pit village near Leeds”, if Ste’s cow of a mother and holier-than-thou sister had ever troubled themselves to ask instead of condemning her for doing so.

Face it, she told the two prune-faced old biddies, Ste was no saint.  Did **** all around the house thanks to their waiting on him hand and foot and often came home roaring drunk. Blew all his ****in’ wages on a share in a racehorse once and didn’t she have to go down and get the money back so they could eat?  That wasn’t the first time the useless sod walked out either, but not before he’d accused her of making him look stupid in front of his mates and given her a fat lip.  Got tired of playing happy families pretty damn fast, their precious Ste did, took off when the going got too tough, turned up again when his bed got too cold, making all kinds of promises and, like the naive fool she was, she fell for it time and time again.  Thought that all that being a good Dad entailed was taking the bairn with you to the bookies and then to feed the ponies in the muddy field at the back of the shops.  Never mind all the mopping up puke or the sleepless nights or the sh*tty nappies, never mind all the…

The screaming match in her in-laws’ cluttered, old-fashioned parlour had reached a crescendo now and the police were almost breaking the door down.  Ste’s sister Millie, wearing a martyred expression that she yearned to slap off her prim and proper face, finally answered.  A burly, middle-aged sergeant, who didn’t attempt to conceal his disgust at Kathy’s dishevelled appearance and the smell of alcohol on her breath, after a brief consultation with the Witches Grim, asked if they wished to press charges.  He seemed to think she should fall at their feet in gratitude when they said they didn’t “for the child’s sake”.  The rookie cop, a lean, lanky young fellow, who looked barely out of school with his shock of red hair and snub nose, stared at her wide-eyed and, as if she couldn’t hear and had no sense, whispered loudly to his superior was it possible she had escaped from the nearby hospital for the criminally insane. 

As for Steve, the cause of it all, he was still bawling furiously and, unaccustomed to being in a buggy now he was two years old, desperately undoing its straps, wriggling furiously and howling ever louder each time Kathy re-fastened them. 

Nobody considered maybe she had a right to be angry when they’d refused her the loan.  Nobody considered she was still young and still entitled to drink, dance and date after Ste died.  Well, stuff them!  She would take her son out of their prissy little lives forever.  She may not want him, but Arsenic and Old Lace weren’t going to get their hands on him either.

/continued on next page

[Marie]

/chapter nine/nobody’s child/continued from previous page

The sprawling city of Liverpool had been a good choice of destination. It was easy to remain anonymous in its less affluent areas among a shifting population and a ready supply of cheap bedsits and rundown houses.  They moved around regularly, partly because Kathy had better things to spend her money on than rent, partly to stop anyone from getting too nosey.  It was two years now and the brat had even begun to speak with a nasal accent. 

With his darkening hair and dark, soulful eyes he’d also begun to look more like Ste.  As if there weren’t already enough reasons to hate him!

Kathy didn’t see a hurt, frightened child.  She had long since stopped seeing him as a person.  She saw only something that tied her down, cost her money, ruined her life.  Swearing, and giving Steve such a hefty slap across the head that his ears rang, she snatched him up by the scruff of the neck and, with many a blow along the way, dragged him upstairs (no easy journey, for the mother staggered drunkenly and the young son struggled in terror) where finally she flung him down on the bed.

“No supper!”  was her parting shot as she slammed and locked the bedroom door. 

Which of course was bad news, but not quite as devastating as it could and should have been:  supper was an extremely rare event and, in any case, Steve had raided the bottom shelf of the larder while she was sleeping.  His tummy still hurt and he still felt slightly queasy from devouring four slices of processed cheese, a blue riband, fistfuls of dried cornflakes, a slice of dried bread, some brown sauce and a half packet of fruit jellies (Mam’s favourite that she always bought in for herself and that he would be in big trouble over when she found out) all topped off with a long stint gulping water from the standpipe in the backyard to quench his raging thirst.

Being kicked and punched was no rare event either.  Nor being locked in.  But even though he was four years old and considered himself a “big boy”, he never got used to it.  He rubbed his teary eyes with grubby knuckles and, sniffling quietly, trying not to enrage Mam further, he belly flopped to the floor and gazed under the bed into the dark oblivion of fluff and dust.  Yes, they were all still there! 

He’d get more than a bleedin’ clout round the bleedin’ ear’ole if she knew he was still knockin’ stuff off though.  Mam had promised him as much the day he got caught stealing a bar of chocolate in Irwin’s grocers and told off by Chalky White, the man who rang up customers’ purchases in a large jingling cash register and who would stand in the shop doorway to light a cigarette with a sparking match, taking several satisfied puffs before crumbling it with his heel and returning inside.  You NEVER let yourself get caught, she blazed, shaking him roughly as soon as they arrived home, and if he EVER brought bluebottles to their door, she’d make him wish he’d never been born. 

Yeh, well, so what, he thought defiantly, a silent tear rolling down his cheek and splashing against the bare floorboard, so what, yer fat b*****d, he already wished he’d never been born!  And he hiccupped ever so gently as he shuffled on his sore stomach further under the bed, stretched his arm towards the wall and retrieved his secret hoard of toys. 

Whenever Mam had been busy pocketing Woolworths’ perfumes, mascaras and lipsticks, Steve had been busy helping himself to goodies courtesy of the wonder of Woolies’ open top glass display.  Several tiny plastic figures had been the result:  dozens and dozens of (mostly farm) animals and one (presumably exhausted) farmer to deal all alone with the workload; a mustard-coloured Red Indian chief; a helmeted soldier hurling a grenade; two Red Indian squaws (that he hadn’t wanted but they were all he’d been able to snatch at the time), a sergeant and a couple of rifle-toting infantrymen…he scooped them all towards him.  Four tiny metallic cars, a yo-yo, rubber ball, packet of crayons and a miniature spinning top completed the treasured and dust-covered collection.  His favourite however was the white plastic horse. 

Tail flowing freely behind, mane apparently blowing in the wind, Champion (so named because his beloved Daddy had often used the word) raced forever in the same spot on a small green plastic stand.  He pressed it to his forehead and closed his eyes.  All the bad things that ever happened went away whenever he thought of riding the white horse. 

If he closed his eyes for a moment and dreamed a dream somebody somewhere cared…

[Marie]

I had to some research on 1950s fashions for this chapter, hope I got it right! 

***chapter 10***

***Kathy, February 1956***

But let me tell you right here and now there had once been a spark in Kathy Ross of a human being.  Of a mother even.  And I can’t help wondering if only…

But the world is full of if onlys and idle wishes.   I wish so much Kathy had confided in someone because then…But she didn’t.  And I like to think that had it been you or I we would…But it wasn’t. 

So all I can do is tell you is how it shouldn’t have been and yet was:-

Kathy Ross critically studied her reflection in the hallstand mirror.  Even though folk said it was an unlucky colour, there was no denying she suited green.  The green silk dress undoubtedly enhanced her features.  She was by no means a raving beauty, but nor was she a plain jane either.   A little on the plump side maybe, but many a man preferred curvy to stick thin, and in green she became almost pretty.  Her pale skin seemed to acquire a more pleasing tone, her light brown eyes shone with a fresh brightness, her glossy brown hair fell in gentle waves on her shoulders.  All in all, it was an extremely pleasing image.

“You sure you’ll be okay?”  Shrugging into her brand new black tent coat, Kathy peeped round the living-room door at her guest.

“Aye, lass, we’ll be grand.” 

Alfie Simpson, to whom the question was addressed, looked up from watching a muted television set (two-year-old Steve was fast asleep upstairs) where several men and a football rolled continuously round the screen.  Kathy’s was one of only a handful of homes in the village that boasted a television and the picture would often flicker and jump, particularly in bad weather.  Still, her friend looked comfortable enough.  Four bottles of pale ale, a thank you for his babysitting, waited on the sideboard, a cup of tea and plate of digestive biscuits balanced on the arm of his chair, and a crackling fire swayed with the winter wind that roared down the chimney.  None of the pit families were well off; most barely eked out an existence, but at least there was always a ready supply of coal.  And how welcome that small mercy was on such a wild night as this! 

Snowflakes swirled through the gathering darkness, a north wind tugged fiercely at the trees and already ice kisses sparkled on windows.  She would have to watch where she walked, and perhaps it was crazy to wear kitten-heeled ankle boots in the snow, but it wasn’t very far to Quigley’s Corner, where they’d arranged to meet, and she had good legs that she liked to show off.   Besides, it was her first date with Stan Gilmore and he had a few bob.  She was keen to make a good impression.

A drained glass of wine stood atop the hallstand drawer.  Drink calmed her nerves and Alfie understood.  Arriving just as Kathy was finishing her second glass, he had insisted on pouring a third.

“Get it down yer neck, girl,” had been his succinct advice. 

It made a refreshing change.  Ethel and Millie Ross had always strongly disapproved of her drinking while indulging Ste.  “He works hard for his money,” they said pointedly, whenever she complained about his regular Friday and Saturday nights out.  Well, the b*****d was six feet under now and Kathy was determined to have some fun!
 
“What d’yer think then, Alfie?” 

She sashayed into the room and twirled around, her coat as yet unbuttoned, her cleavage bursting to be free of the tight-fitting dress, her diamante necklace and ear-rings flashing like diamonds in the firelight. 

“Grand,” he replied, without much interest. 

It wasn’t the reaction she usually got from men and Kathy felt somewhat peeved as she wrapped a pure wool scarf around her neck and tugged on her leather gloves, but she bit her tongue.   It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of an on-tap babysitter.  Alfie had even volunteered his services. 

A newcomer to the village, Simpson was an odd little fellow, who would sit in the White Swan for hours, wearing an old flat checked cap, nursing the same pint and puffing on the same unlit cigarette, apparently perusing a newspaper, but his bird-like eyes taking in everything around him.  He was a closed book about his past and he never joined in conversations or banter.  Of course, the rumour mills churned, but all that anyone really knew was that he did his job well enough and had always been a miner.  And he knew nothing of Kathy apart from the fact she was a widow with a small child. 

The fledgling friendship, built on nothing more than occasional remarks about the weather or the local bus service or the price of lamb, sharing nothing but a mutual recognition in each other as outsiders who scorned the village way of life, although Kathy’s contempt was much more obvious and Alfie’s much more hidden, suited both.  Alfie never asked, and Kathy never told him, where she got the money from to make her frequent shopping trips to Leeds, buying brand new outfits, getting her hair done and eating in exclusive restaurants.  Almost certainly, thanks to the gossips, he already knew anyway.

The fatal accident at the coal mine was entirely Ste’s fault - he had downed a couple of pints before his shift - which meant the colliery was under no obligation to pay any compensation at all.  But its owners, the Chorleys, were a kindly family and took pity on the young single mother, as did Ste’s workmates, who dug deep into threadbare pockets.  The Chorley brothers did have to make a stand to discourage such behaviour nevertheless and the compo, welcome as it was, wasn’t as high as it would have been had Ste not been drinking.  Six months later that payment and the collection cash was nearly all gone.  Which was why someone she wouldn’t normally have looked at twice, Stan Gilmore the butcher, a portly man pushing forty, with thin, greying hair, a bulbous nose, fleshy lips that he had a habit of  licking, and a healthy bank account had suddenly become a very attractive prospect indeed.  Kathy had enjoyed frittering away the money, secure in the knowledge Ethel and Millie Ross, just as they had always done, would continue to pay the rent and other bills “for the sake of little Stevie”.  She didn’t want the good times to end. 

As for the busybodies who thought she ought to be spending the cash on her small son and not herself, well, they could go to hell.  Where they predicted Kathy was headed.  And where, if such a place were actually to exist, she wished Ste would burn for getting her up the duff and saddled with a kid in the first place. 

The funeral, a grand affair with a solid mahogany coffin and a carriage pulled by four black plumed horses, all paid for by Ethel and Millie Ross out of their savings, was done and dusted.  Kathy was probably the only one out of the whole congregation who didn’t cry.  Although, aware she might get more money if she did, she made a great show of dabbing a hanky to her eyes, blowing her nose and clutching her little boy’s hand. 

Tears shone too on the tot’s face, but Stevie had no idea what was going on and his tears were a mixture of  boredom and fury at being restrained.  Every now and again he would try to swing on the pew screen in front or climb on the bench behind and every now and again a villager would take him outside to play for a short while, ignoring his protests when brought back inside.  Poor little mite, he didn’t understand it was his father lying there cold and dead…

 

[Marie]

***chapter 11***

***Spring/Summer 1953***

Their meeting had been a twist of fate. 

He was travelling around Yorkshire seeking work and, after securing cheap accommodation in the picturesque pit village of Mereden, headed for that hugely popular and well known drinking establishment, The White Swan Inn.  She came looking for an ex-boyfriend who took all she owned, to learn nobody of that name or description had ever worked there, nor, the unsolicited information was added, did they serve unaccompanied females, and especially not when they were intoxicated. 

The Swan’s door swung open and, shouting and cursing, a buxom woman in impossibly high heels staggered out as Ste was about to enter. 

“Nishe Eysh!”  She slurred, having just enough time to look up and observe them before falling into his chest. 

Through the tavern’s frosted windows, through the stifling heat of its crowded interior, through the stench and fog of its thick tobacco smoke, piano keys could be heard tinkling like raindrops, only to be lost forever in the hubbub of voices, the loud bursts of laughter, the harsh clink of glasses, the snatches of drunken song. 

A moment away, and yet far away, outside in their world, roses and honeysuckle scented the quiet late evening air and birds chirped final songs before retiring to the dark solitude of woods and eaves.  Their eyes met again when he spoke to ask after her well being, the polite, trivial words of a stranger, long forgotten and of no matter now.  But it was that very moment when a silent moon chose to rise slowly from cobwebby clouds, slithering through the trees to tinge everywhere with a silvery, romantic glow, and that very moment when a breeze hurried by, rippling the grey-green grass of Quigley’s Corner, and whispering a thousand secrets to two lonely people captured in the soul of a balmy April night.

Twenty-six-year old Katherine Fenwick had led an itinerant existence since leaving the Mother of Mercy Catholic Girls’ Home.  She flitted through life like a ghost, from place to place, from job to job, from man to man.  Yet, oddly, she consummated few of her relationships.  The stigma of being an unmarried mother didn’t trouble her, nor did the Catholic “sin” of sex before marriage; she’d long since stopped believing in religion.  What did trouble her was the idea of being stuck with a bloody kid.  And so far luck had been on Kathy’s side and somehow she’d managed to avoid falling pregnant.

Thirty-year-old Steven Paul Ross thought he might like to be a father some day.  But definitely not just yet.  There had been a few close calls and he was always relieved when they turned out to be false alarms.  It was perhaps hardly surprising that, despite the “nice girls don’t” attitude prevalent in 1950s Britain, nice girls certainly did where Ste was concerned.  He was tall, tanned and handsome, with a perfect manly physique, thick, almost black, hair and dreamy brown eyes.  Not only did he have movie star looks, but his old style chivalry and charm turned women weak at the knees.

Not that Kathy considered herself a “nice girl”.  She was no novice in the ways of the world and, to Ste’s shocked amusement, with a broad wink and drunken giggles, stuffed a condom from her handbag into his jacket pocket when he gallantly suggested, on learning that Kathy had nowhere to sleep, she could stay with him in the furnished rooms he rented.

Ste, being a gentleman and loth to take advantage of her drunken state, he gave up his bed to sleep in the arm-chair and nothing happened.  But other things happened quickly afterwards.  Next morning a letter rattled through the letter-box informing him that his job application at the Mereden colliery had been successful.  He rang his mother Ethel and sister Millie from the red telephone kiosk outside the village post office to impart the good news and came back grinning from ear to ear. 

It seemed, by an amazing coincidence, Mr and Mrs Ross and the then twelve-year-old Millie had spent a camping holiday close to Mereden a year or so before Ste was born, just as the village was beginning to prosper, and they’d all been greatly impressed with the new terraced houses that were being constructed.  Ethel clearly remembered her late husband saying, if only he could afford it, he’d move the family into one tomorrow.  But now they could afford it. Or, at least, they thought they would be able to afford to pay Ste’s rent and help out with furniture and carpets.  They were quite happy in the home where they’d always lived, they didn’t need any luxuries, and what else was there for them to spend their money on, if not Ste?  Ethel and Millie were so, so proud of him finding work after the steelworks in his hometown closed down, leaving him, like so many others, jobless, and he deserved much, much more than making do with rented rooms.

His doting mother and sister had always indulged him and secretly Ste had been half hoping they would volunteer to fund him yet again.  He was by no means lazy, but he was so used to being spoilt that even at thirty years of age he had never learnt the value of money and consequently it ran through his fingers like water.  And, while it was good to have a sexy woman in his life,  Kathy didn’t contribute a penny towards expenses.  Which, of course, only added to Ethel and Millie’s immediate dislike of Miss Fenwick (the feeling being heartily reciprocated).  But none of his girlfriends were ever good enough for the apple of their eye and, though their disapproval was more intense than usual, Ste brushed any concerns aside.  In any case, despite their misgivings, they, fortunately or foolishly, still regularly sent him very generous cheques.

It was some weeks later and just as she was settling into a pleasant routine of  generally doing no more than strolling round the shops to treat herself  (there was very little food shopping or cooking to do, as they frequently caught a taxi to town and ate out, and very little cleaning or washing, as  Ste did the lion’s share of it) that Kathy missed a period.  Even then she wasn’t overly worried, imagining her body clock was probably a little awry due to all the excitement of moving. 

Built at the very top of a steep slope, the sturdy houses of Quigley Road, with magnificent views, indoor bathrooms, thick walls and double glazed windows, looked condescendingly down into the valley at the narrow streets of miners’ cottages that, over the course of a century and more, had become damp, dismal slums.  Kathy, being well aware the women of the village disliked her (“All fur coat and no knickers” they whispered)  loved to do exactly the same. 

She would stand smugly on the doorstep, smoking a leisurely cigarette and leaning against the door jamb with her arms folded, just as harassed mothers passed by with their heavy shopping and hordes of children.  Knowing the miners’ families could often only afford second-hand clothes, she further rubbed their noses in it by dressing for the occasion, wearing full make-up and inevitably something else brand new.  Who cared if she didn’t have any allies other than Ste?  She had gone up in the world and she was determined to show off about it.  No doubt they were only jealous because she had money, a handsome man and frequently (Kathy being a natural flirt) the attention of their husbands.

/continued on next page

[Marie]

/continued from previous page/chapter 11/spring/summer 1953

Ste, however, was extremely popular and fitted in easily, enjoying the camaraderie and good-natured banter of the colliery.  But, even apart from the obvious risks of working in the mine, his job was not all plain sailing. 

It broke his heart to see the pit ponies condemned to their sad, twilight existence underground.  Electrical lighting had been installed in their whitewashed stables, but the only daylight they saw was what thin, miserly rays occasionally stole down into the mineshaft.  They never knew, as other ponies and horses did, the freedom of racing around a paddock with a warming sun on their back or cooling rain glistening on their coat and sweet green grass to graze on.  Most of the miners bonded with their charges and treated them as well as they could, spoiling them with treats of apples, carrots and polo mints, talking to them as gently as they might a favoured child.  But there was one man in particular who was downright cruel.

Dougie Smullen, a thickset, unpleasant fellow, with fists like iron, bullied the younger lads and was reputed to have beaten his own mother and later his wife into early graves.  There was a suspicion too that he had killed at least two men but each time his wife, being too terrified to defy her husband, gave him an alibi.  Dougie felt he was untouchable and even the strongest miner backed off from confrontation. 

The pony that had the misfortune to be Smullen’s, Little Basil, whom Dougie nicknamed Little Bas***d,  had spirit, unlike his more placid companions, and this infuriated his callous driver.  One shift, livid at Basil’s lack of co-operation, he deliberately made the plucky little creature bolt, sending Basil running towards the some arched girders, the sharp ends ripping him all along the ribs.  Ste was burning with fury as Smullen only roared with laughter, but it was too dangerous to challenge him down in the pit and he bided his time.  It came sooner than he’d hoped.

That evening as he walked into The Swan the first thing he saw was Dougie propping up the bar, joking with publican Tommy Firestone as though he didn’t have a care in the world.  He tried to keep his temper in check these days, aware of the damage his fists could do, but a red mist of fury descended.  Blazing, he strode purposefully up to Smullen, swung him round by the shoulder, and announcing “This is for Basil”, punched him square in the jaw.

Nobody dreamed easygoing Ross owned a fierce temper and for a moment or two they were stunned into silence.  But the whole village was sick of Smullen’s brutality.  They were all on Ste’s side and keen to see Dougie get his comeuppance although, given Smullen’s brute strength, they doubted he would.  They waited, as Ste did, for the downed man to get up and return the blow. 

But Dougie Smullen baulked at the idea of fighting someone prepared to stand up to him, especially as he wasn’t carrying a knife or knuckleduster to ensure victory.  Ross may not be as strong, but he kept himself in good shape and played for Mereden’s football team.  Dougie had been getting more and more breathless of late and he knew he chanced a hammering.  And he wasn’t prepared to take that chance.  Without a word, he picked himself up, dusted himself down and stormed off, the derisory jeers of the spectators still ringing in his ears.  Nobody saw Dougie Smullen after that night though they learnt later that he drew out his savings and left for London.  But even though his tormentor had gone, there was to be no happy ending for poor Basil as Ste hoped. He died later in the hospital pen of the terrible injuries he sustained.

Often Ste would come home from the pit and break down in tears, seeking comfort from Kathy as he tried to tell her how it scalded his heart to think of those poor ponies confined to the semi-darkness, often half blind and with only a few short years left by the time they were retired.  But Kathy had problems of her own and wasn’t interested.  Her body just didn’t felt right recently.  When she missed a second time, a visit to the doctor’s confirmed her worst fears.  The baby was due in February…

[Marie]

***chapter 12***

***stories***

Horrified that the child might be born illegitimate, Ethel and Millie threatened to pull the plug on their financial support if the couple didn’t “do the right thing by the baby” and so a registry office wedding was hastily arranged.  But their relationship was not just on the rocks, it was stranded in the middle of an ocean, and no sooner had the ceremony been performed, the papers signed, and the witnesses witnessed (Ethel and Millie, there being nobody else; Ste didn’t feel, given the lovelessness of it all, that it was right to invite any friends, and Kathy didn’t have any friends to invite) than it deteriorated even further. 

The reluctant bride, before, during and after the wedding, complained that there should have been a honeymoon “at least to the Isle of Man”, the groom didn’t want to spend any more time with his new wife than was absolutely necessary and Ethel and Millie, who’d been digging their heels in for weeks over it, stuck to their guns and flatly refused to pay for any honeymoon anywhere.  The petty arguments and resentments, sewn so deeply they would last a lifetime, continued unabated all the way home.  By the time the four alighted from the taxi outside 44 Quigley Road (Ethel and Millie having also flatly refused to pay for a “do”) the humid August evening could have frozen over from their iciness. 

Kathy, calling her husband and in-laws a selection of choice names, jumped out of the cab, ran up the six stone steps and slammed the front door so hard after her that the brass knocker rattled several times, as if some phantom visitor stood requesting urgent admittance.  The taxi driver, who diplomatically passed no remark while his four angry passengers were at loggerheads, accepted his fare and ensured his tip by acting as though nothing were amiss and, for the rest of the evening and long, long afterwards entertained customers with his story of the warring family and the marriage "doomed to fail”.

The wedding day ended as miserably as it had begun.  Ethel and Millie, wearing sombre expressions more befitting a funeral, headed for the tram stop to the train station; the groom went off alone to The White Swan to drown his sorrows; the bride took herself off to bed with twenty cigarettes and a magnum of meant-to-be celebratory champagne that had been presented to Ste by his workmates.  (As was common practice in those days, the doctor advised the mother-to-be to drink Guinness for iron.  Kathy further prescribed for herself Woodbines and any available alcohol.)

As if it thought an appropriate backdrop were needed to play out against all the drama, a fierce thunderstorm began to rage over Mereden that night.  When Ste finally staggered home, a black eye and a gash across his temple from a drunken fall, needing three attempts before he succeeded getting the key in the lock, his wedding suit bedraggled and his wedding shirt stuck to his skin, Kathy’s loud snores and the acrid smell of smoke led him upstairs.   He stubbed out the long-ashed cigarette that was dying a slow death in the ash-tray on the floor and stood the magnum of champagne upright, not caring about the river of alcohol that had already soaked through the carpet.  It was probably for the best, he thought, that Kathy had spilled most of its contents.  It surely couldn’t have been doing their unborn child much good. 

Another flash of lightning lit up the room where his wife lay across what should have been their marital bed and that he knew, so firmly etched was their loathing for each other, they would never share again.

This was the woman he had loved once. 

Briefly perhaps, both swept up in the euphoria of a summer night perhaps, but there had been a moment when they were two parts coming together as a whole. 

This woman in a wedding suit creased beyond all recognition, one shoe on the floor and the other hanging off her foot, dark hair strewn across her peevish face, her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of her open-mouthed snores. 

The clanging bells of a fire engine joined the night’s chorus of roaring thunderclaps and teeming rain and he knew where it would be headed.  There had been that familiar red glow above Bagley Woods. The woods were atop a hill, where its trees often caught the brunt of the lightning’s fury.  Tomorrow he would go there and capture the image of another lightning tree.

He had taken up photography as a means of escape from his unhappiness.  Bagley Woods proved a rich source of material.  There was something reassuring about the red calm of sunrise or sunset, a solace in the half-hidden pond where pinpricks of sunlight sparkled on the water and moist-skinned frogs leaped, a quietness for a troubled heart in watching squirrels dart through long, thick grass or birds taking flight.  The scudding clouds, the impossible blueness of the sky, the wild flowers flourishing even in the darkest shadows, Nature never failed to take his breath away with her beauty. 

Once Kathy had been beautiful to him too.

Once they had shared past, present and future in the way that only close friends and lovers can.  A memory slipped back and made him smile.

It was June, but the temperature dipped suddenly that night and they sat before the fire Ste had lit, leaning cosily against each other as they imagined they would lean against each other all their lives.  They were eating chocolate-coated biscuits from a hugely expensive luxury tin and sipping tea out of china cups, poured from an antique style sterling silver teapot (teapot, biscuits and exclusive china tea-set all purchased that very afternoon using the money Ethel and Millie regularly provided for “essentials” from a store that thought itself too good for its clientele, for it demanded extortionate prices and insisted that nobody under the age of fifteen be allowed to set foot inside ever and especially not in its elite toy section). 

With only the yellow glow firelight to break the thick darkness, they were trying to frighten each other every time a flame crackled or a wall-shadow danced or a tree creaked in the wind.  Gradually the talk moved on to true ghost stories. 

Ste told her the old family story, passed down through generations, of how on her deathbed Great-great-grandma Harriet insisted she saw her late husband George standing by the foot of the bed and suddenly called out “Wait, George, wait!  I’m ready now!” before slipping into her eternal sleep; Kathy told him of the ghostly nun, who was regularly seen gliding along the corridor towards the chapel, only to vanish into the wall, where arch-shaped, darker brickwork indicated an entrance had once been. 

/continued on next page

[Marie]

/continued from previous page/***chapter 12***/***stories***

It was a time when they could laugh together and cry together.

Kathy could be extremely funny and was a gifted mimic.  Tears of laughter streamed down his face as she related the story of the time eccentric Sister Teresa accidentally fell off the desk she was sitting on and then tried to pretend she’d done it on purpose “To amuse my beautiful children, who are to me like God's little sun-kissed flowers”.  She told of five-year-old orphan Frances, who had the poignant habit of announcing anybody and everybody to be her missing Mummy or Daddy, and who, one day in the crowded hall, loudly declared Mother Superior to be her Mummy and the milkman to be her Daddy, which caused Mother Superior, who actually had a crush  on Joe Thorne the milkman, to blush beetroot red and Father Liguori, who was on a visit from Italy and being shown round the Catholic girls’ home by Father Kelly, to stare open-mouthed (despite Ste’s ribs aching with laughter and him begging her to stop, Kathy mercilessly imitated not only little Frances, but all the adults in the drama, including her own version of what Joe Thorne the milkman would have made of it all).

“Did you ever hear of the Haunted Farm, Kath?” He asked, putting the conversation back on a serious footing, as he returned to the original topic of the supernatural.  “There's said to be a farm somewhere in a tiny Yorkshire village that closed down in the Second World War and been deserted ever since.  Well, deserted of living creatures…They say the ghosts of two beautiful black horses have often been seen there, near a tree that was struck by lightning…”

He hadn’t realised tears moistened his eyes again until Kathy laughed at him for it. 

“Why?” she asked, baffled.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and gave a wry smile.  He had never known why the image of the farm with its lightning tree and ghostly horses always struck such a chord and filled him with emotion.  It had been so ever since Terry Donnelly first told him of it.

They were Bevin Boys, he and Terry.  Both of them so keen to serve their country when they came of age only to have their hopes dashed.  Instead of being given a uniform and sent to fight, they were given overalls, helmets and steel-capped boots, then, after six weeks training, sent down the dark, damp tunnels of the coal mines.  Spoilt by his mother and aunt since his father’s death, and being sheltered from the harsher aspects of life, it was the first inkling Ste had that life could be unfair. 

Like thousands of others unlucky enough to have their National Service numbers pulled out of a hat, they were boys doing a man’s job:  tough, dangerous, sometimes even fatal, work in appalling conditions.  But many people assumed them to be conscientious objectors; they were spat at and called Conchies, and given none of the recognition or admiration awarded to military personnel.  Perhaps the only saving grace was that the more experienced miners who had been too old for conscription took the lads under their wing and built up a rapport.  Neither did the colliery he’d been assigned to use pit ponies.  He’d thought back then it was a custom that had died out many years ago. 

And that snowy December day close on Christmas, Bevin Boys and sinewy old miners emerged from their shift, chatting and singing bawdy Christmas songs as their boots scrunched on the snow, their coal-blackened figures in stark contrast to the swirling winter snowflakes and pure white landscape. 

His breath smoky blue as it curled into the winter air, Terry was telling Ste about Iris, a land girl he’d met at a dance in Malton.

“She’s based in Yorkshire, some miles away, she says, from The Haunted Farm but she wouldn’t say in which direction and exactly how far.”

Surprised when Ste remarked he’d never heard of any such Haunted Farm, Terry told him the tale of the old Yorkshire horse farm designed by renowned architect William Drumgold, and celebrated for the quality of its horses, the kindliness of its workers and, in particular, its odd ethereal atmosphere.  The farm closed during the First World War, but re-opened for a brief time in the early Thirties.  Until, like an omen, lightning struck down an ancient tree near the stable block and, in the wake of this new World War, came the farm’s demise.  Except that was not an end to it.  People passing by the rundown buildings, the stagnant lake and deserted land had begun to report strange sightings. 

Two breathtakingly beautiful black horses, eerily silent and leaving no hoof prints in mud or snow, were often seen galloping majestically across the fields to the ravaged tree, where they would stop and gaze proudly at the land before fading away.  They felt, claimed those who witnessed the phenomenon, that they had been carried into another world and that a phoenix would rise from the ashes and tree and farm grow anew.

Ste never knew why a lump sprang suddenly to his throat as he pictured those ghostly horses.  Perhaps it was that moment, the togetherness of old and young, the black and white merged; amid the crude songs, one of the Bevin Boys singing Silent Night in perfect harmony, his lone voice somehow blending so easily into the dozens of rugged voices.  Perhaps it was because despite the bombings, death and destruction it was almost Christmas.  Perhaps it was all this and the richly-woven tapestry of memories that still made him teary.

And it was only now as the thunderstorm raged that it came to him.  Only now he realised why he would go down to Bagley Woods again tomorrow and photograph another lightning tree.

It was hope.

It was a dream, a crazy dream for all that, but a wish, a hope, a prayer that there just might be something better.  To believe in the beautiful black horses that still reputedly ran wild and free when everything else was gone.

They were bringing a child into their world without love.  Like a tree struck by lightning before it ever had the chance to blossom and grow. And they had nothing to offer, nothing to give, but the hope that perhaps one day the world might become a better place. 

Nothing to give but a dream.